


Surveillance

by IncurableNecromantic



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
Genre: Dubrovnik as described by someone who has obviously never been there, I Have To Laugh, I will tag this, M/M, Stone has the worst most adoring crush in the history of mankind, Stone kills a non-zero number of dudes and rescues his damsel in distress, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Voyeurism, a non-Sonic non-MENA mission for a refreshing change, as someone who knows several federal employees—Robotnik limited to a govt paycheck?, because there isn't a consent conversation, dubcon, it done got worshipful boys, stop staring at me with them big ol eyes, tricky tricky usage of the notion of martyrdom, unrequited love (or are it)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:36:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24580114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncurableNecromantic/pseuds/IncurableNecromantic
Summary: On a laid-back, leisurely kind of mission, Agent Stone gets to stand watch.
Relationships: Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik/Agent Stone
Comments: 13
Kudos: 95





	1. Chapter 1

The cleanest and most elegant sense is sight.

Tony Kushner had it right (as usual) even if their specific sentiments on the subject may differ. Smell and taste transcend the individual organism, particles of the other approaching and entering the self. But he’s always had suspicions about hearing, too. Isn’t the air itself an other that reaches in to rattle the self's bones? It’s like smoking's unseemly reminder that we breathe in air that has just been in someone else’s lungs. Too close entirely.

And touch… all those flinching nerves with no appreciable difference between pain and pleasure. Skin flakes. Sweat. It's nothing but a complete disregard for reasonable borders, really.

Sight is light and light is very clean. It bounces, elastic, off of surfaces and travels to the eye unsullied. Light can slipstream through vacuums. No luminiferous aether required, no gummy air to manipulate, no spare bits to shed. Electrons aren’t mucky the way pheromones are. And light is so very _clever_ , both wave and particle, much too refined to settle neatly into one crude category.

He takes very good care of his eyes. Exercises, check-ups, sunglasses on most cloudy days. f.lux on his personal laptop and orange glasses at work. It’s paid off—his best shot was 1700-some yards. He’s even better with a scope. They had to redact his name from the official rolls.

Technically speaking, an agent is only supposed to act—and if necessary, react. It’s not for him to observe and evaluate and decide. He takes orders and makes them into actions.

But he’s not a machine. Or if he is, he’s a very, very sophisticated one. Nearly an AI, in his little ways.

His body is trained and tuned to pick up changes in temperature and humidity, to feel the subtle human electricity of animal tension. He listens, he smells, he tastes the slight hormonal changes in his own saliva that warn him of a hindbrain observation that may soon prove important.

But he likes seeing best. Watching, even. He likes shape and pattern—he was always good at puzzles and fashion—and he likes how calm and in-control watching feels. He’s not involved. He’s that fabled detached observer, shoring up secret moments traced on the insides of his eyes.

Watching without acting pays dividends, just like thinking before speaking. It's about setting good boundaries. Again.

He’ll bloody his hands when it’s clear he should, and not before.

* * *

When he watches with his body it lets him do things like this:

Taste first. That uncomfortable clash of the two parts of every human: the rising ape tasting metal on its tongue as deep synapses link and fire, the falling angel scanning and assessing to find what the animal knew without knowing. Are those distant wafts of CS gas or his own adrenaline? He parts his lips to sip it like a wine.

Smell and sensation together. Hairs standing beneath his clothes, skin dewy from the humid sunshine, bones resonating with some deep rumble from the earth or from the car's whees or from the next block over; a sharp trace of sulfur and leather. Bombs or gas? Gunpowder or aftershave?

The car lurches. Hard stop, feet bracing on the floor. Middle of the street. He starts to move.

Now his gun is out, now his hand finds the black-clothed chest beside him. It rises to his hand in a short lurch. He sees what he didn't know he was seeing, now, in the twitch in the driver’s shoulder. In the wild gaze in the rearview mirror.

The driver goes to draw his weapon. Stone lifts and fires, one to the temple, clean and devastatingly loud in a closed space. Ears ringing, he feels more than hears the hum of three dangerous weapons coming online from their perches up the doctor's sleeves, their elegant and powerful single senses a little slower and a little less direct than his five.

Blood on the windshield. Flag’s up: game on. He pushes the doctor down and scans their surroundings.

Two on the roof, three in the alley, one behind their car. One prize. One pawn. He lets the geometry of the prey animal meld with the arithmetic of the predator. Six fountains of blood to open.

Beside him, "Oh, God damn it."

He starts to crawl to the front of the car, to push the corpse out of the way and drive. Smoke and blood are a wonderful smelling salt. He feels as lucid and clear as new snow.

But their new friends are good. The snipers shoot tires first, which tells him they’re not trying to kill them—or at least not without pain.

He’s better.

It's a glorious Dubrovnik day, the streets all washed with celestial mid-morning light. The red on the windshield glass is the color of poppies in June. Their position isn’t so very far from the sea; some part of him can still smell it. There isn’t much room to hide in this neighborhood, in this charming old city where time has worn off the edges of what is really a very sharp and precise grid.

Change of plans. He takes a fistful of black crêpe. It’s too easy to haul. Maybe ćevapi for lunch; get some meat on those bones. He shoots a man to death over one sharp shoulder and pulls the doctor's arm until they’re through the car door and sprinting across the street.

The drones launch and expand like weather balloons, limbless Man O’Wars of the sky.

Only one bullet cracks on the street as they move from the motionless car to an alley, narrowly missing the doctor’s shoulder. It’s a pretty good shot, only one wasted bullet. Nice to be working with professionals.

A drone covers them. Its aim is very good, but it only gets off two lethal shots before a rifle cracks and it falls, frizzing, to the earth. In the meantime he shoots the third soldier in the alley. The other drones are already acquiring targets again, tactics translated into code and downloaded straight from the greatest strategic mind on the planet. But even the fastest processors can’t react instantaneously.

Stone has six million years of razor-honed instinct. He doesn’t need the time it takes an artificial killer to do its diligent work.

The three smoking corpses make a decent rendezvous point; he clears the lane with one sweep of his arm, then pushes with his full hand against a warm chest. Across the street, he can hear a death scream as a man’s heart is cooked from the inside out and he falls off a building.

One more left. On the roof somewhere. He can probably leave it to the drones, since they’ve got the elevation. If robots could be pissed, maybe they would be. They lost a sibling. Their master was attacked. He’d be pissed. He is.

He watches with his whole body, each moment coming at him too-clear with all of their infinitesimal, kaleidoscopic changes. Perhaps that's the hand of the falling angel, that lets him realize with a sudden perfect knowing, which might not take part in any one sense at all, that one of the corpses is moving.

He drops it, two bullets in the head. He feels the startled jump of the chest under his palm. He observes—distantly, the work of eyes and the cold heights of his calm brain—the gun falling limp from a brain-splattered hand. That man very well could’ve killed the doctor, or blown out one of his knees. And when he’d just had those trousers dry cleaned, too.

No talking now, no screaming. Waiting. Watching. They can be very quiet when they want to be.

Was he sure of six? Two on the roof, three in the alley, one behind. Why not two behind? Why be so sure of the odds on three-against-one? When the doctor is a walking arsenal, and he… is whatever he is. A professional, perhaps.

Still pressed to the wall, the doctor’s left hand moves, pushing buttons. A green light flutters like a pulse over the pad of a fingertip.

“Two still online. Four to three, badniks. You’re extremely selfish, Stone. Leave some for the rest of us.”

The chest under his palm rises and falls quicker than his. The heart pounds faster.

He smiles. Gives himself the reward of sight: those sharp eyes and dark, expressive brows, the tall body pressed unresisting to sand-colored walls of square stone. Good shapes, strong contrast. The slight twitch of the moustache, an involuntary stress response clearly unnoticed. The slowing breath filling the lean throat.

He’s still watching with the rest of himself—alert for noise, for smells, for anything that warns that there were more than six.

But he lets his eyes take in the light of his prize, alive and scarcely ruffled. Six fountains of blood. A daring rescue. His fellow predator content and even amused, his keen front-facing eyes scanning the roofline and awaiting the return of his favored pets.

“Ahh, there you are,” the doctor croons, face opening in a strange, luring smile. Stone can hear the hovering behind him. Sweet as a songbird’s call.

The badniks float back to their creator’s side. One is splashed with red, its protruding drill sticky and dripping with sunshine-infused blood and offered almost like a child presenting its parent a fretful injury. Or a cat showing off its trophy.

Or a robot, more precisely, showing where it is dirty. Coded to view such dirtiness is its pride and its prime inefficiency.

“Collect OV1-4090,” the doctor orders the clean drone, pointing to the street where the fallen drone is still sparking. “Plenty of good scrap still.”

Stone removes the partially empty ammo from his gun and inserts a fresh magazine.

"At ease, Stone. They've scanned the neighborhood. That was the lot of them."

Stone smiles and holsters his weapon. "As you say, doctor."

The doctor runs his finger over the drill and reveals a smooth track of stainless steel through the blood. “Maybe I’ll do a fleet in red, next time. It’s a good look for them. Aren't they a feast for the eyes.”

Of course they are. The acorn never falls far from the tree.

* * *

The doctor doesn’t care much about creature comforts, but he likes status. When Stone liaised and booked flights for this job, the doctor insisted on something very comfortable and very central or they weren’t going. The brass balked, whined, insisted on 3-star hotels and not a penny more.

They act like money is an object to the man who's invented technology too priceless for any currently-functioning currency to properly value. The doctor authorized the charge to one of his Swiss bank accounts and instructed him to bill the military for the jet fuel.

In the end they rented the entire hotel, all 17 luxury rooms and 2 suites. The doctor's a big believer in better living through spite.

The hotel is a beautiful Baroque former-palace close to cafes, museums, and monuments. The air of the terrace restaurant is full of fragrant jasmine and blooming citrus flowers. As he can personally attest, drinking coffee on that patio is an experience so romantic it belongs in a Bond film. Stone knows a few honeymooners who would sell each other’s right eye for a week here.

The doctor doesn't seem to notice, not when he's busy making himself a temporary headquarters in the senior suite. There are no military bases near Dubrovnik—it’s been a problem since forever. But a blind man could see how much the doctor prefers the lack of boots and salutes and empty eyes under regulation crewcuts. Robotnik switches to more casual cuts of black linens and crêpe, always immaculate even when he’s not slept in 36 hours. Serbo-Croatian agrees with the doctor, the many plosives sounding right from his lips as he kisses them out, the soft glottal consonants shifting his tone to something almost earnest, even when he’s on mute and (Stone must assume) cussing a blue streak.

Since it's people they’re dealing with, Stone is authorized to take frequent breaks, parallel to the doctor's pattern of leaving in a huff every two hours or so. The huge private terrace with its view of the shiveringly clear Adriatic sea invites persistent daydreams of sailing by day and waltzing on the wharves at sunset. Parties on glimmering yachts or private rooftops. Stone’s never been so close to ordering a martini while on the job.

And it is just another job, like any other. The only difference is that this job is only about weapons inasmuch as they're using diplomacy to not use them. It makes the doctor stressed. Stone understands completely. Robotnik never does his best work when he’s only _consulting_. If they’d all have the good sense to knowingly hand over complete, utter, and absolute control, everything would be go along much quicker and much more efficiently. But they don't.

Eventually there comes an evening where the doctor hits a gold pocket as he sorts through the detritus. He’s in Russian, in Pashto, in Arabic, in a smattering of French, in HTML all at once. At last, those two translating hands switch places, code for diplomacy, diplomacy for code. The doctor’s head, his hands, his shoulders, every tense limber inch of him starts bobbing to the beat in his headphones.

This is his world, Stone thinks. It’s only that some people don’t know it, yet. The doctor owns them, lock, stock, and barrel, them and their superiors and their mothers. Every single one. One beautiful, impossible man bobbing his head to Gangsta’s Paradise, has the world in the palm of his elegant hands.

When it’s all done, it's all done very suddenly: merely another tally for the perfect operations record. Stretching his neck, the doctor rolls an insouciant glance over his shoulder. He raises his eyebrows to Stone, almost as if to say ‘that’s all they’ve got?’

Commiseration. You can fall in love with anyone, but with whom can you wordlessly convey deepest, darkest, subterraean shade?

“We’re going to get some fan mail that could make it into the greatest hits file, Agent Stone,” he says, referring to the folder in which they put the really well-made death threats. “Have the good ones sent to my tablet.”

“Yes, doctor. Any particular hopes?”

“The smart money’s on either the Saudis or the Kochs,” Robotnik says, standing up and stretching an arm behind his head. “But there’s always room for an underdog. What do you wager?”

(The next day, they’re shot at by Albanian militia-types.

“I have to admire the hustle,” Stone says, on his knees and looting the corpses. Why did anyone even buy guns? People were dropping them all over the streets these days.

Robotnik snorts and hands him a five spot with the unbegrudging resignation of someone who was only it in for the flutter. “Do you have to, really? I don't. If you’re going to come at the king, you need to come correct.”

“Right as always, sir.”)

"The usual, doctor. Any other instructions?"

“I've decided we're staying an extra week,” the doctor says. He types something, and it’s set up. “I'm owed a few recreational hours and I want to get elbow-deep in an engine soon. If I hear a single military voice in the next 168 hours, you’re toast.”

“Query, sir."

The doctor sighs deeply. "Proceed."

"I made it to captain before I gave them the slip. Does my own count as a military voice, doctor?”

Robotik gives him a flat look and gestures to the door with a thumb. “Take your tight five back to Second City's Stand-Up 1, Stone. I don’t want to see you for the next 12 hours.”

Stone bows a little, the threat of a salute in the quirk of his smile, and swears he sees a tiny little smirk on the doctor’s face as Stone leaves for his walk.

* * *

They have separate bedrooms. Anything else would be wildly inappropriate. (The rumors that already abound would make a Congressman blush.) To Stone's taste there's even a faint whiff of impropriety about the shared terrace, especially since they're here entirely unobserved.

The doctor won’t endure anyone else’s security. His babies make a sweep of every strange room before he enters it, ensuring that all security cameras are destroyed or at least blacked out while he’s there. The hotel isn’t an exception. During these leisurely missions, Stone's doctor only wants two eyes on him at a time, if that.

And because it’s leisurely, the doctor keeps as regular hours as he ever has. Robotnik's really something of a morning person, although what he means by that is a workday that starts at 03:00. Stone suspects he likes the control of watching the sun rise above his many works, finding itself already late to a party for one.

Stone knows enough to clock out and take a long walk by 19:20, to give the man his space. The doctor’s usually in bed by 21:00. He works hard.

Robotnik’s sleep hygiene is some kind of nightmare, itself—polyphasic when he wants, Dickensian otherwise. He drops into sleep like a machine shutting down, but at leisure, his personal habits revert to an alarmingly pre-Victorian pattern. When he can operate without the crush of invention and demand, there’s usually a period near true midnight between the doctor’s first and second sleeps where he wanders the halls disarmingly attired in eyeglasses. That is the sole leisure hour he takes for hobbies: translating Russian literature into Japanese, folding fractal origami, or throwing tennis balls against the walls. Anything to alleviate boredom just enough to let him remain ready for sleep.

(Stone wants to think there’s something in the occasional pounding of a tennis ball on his door at 23:58. There never is.)

All of that is eccentric, certainly, but well-within the usual parameters.

It’s the quiet nights that get to Stone. When his body registers uncanny silence an hour or two after Stone has gone to bed, he often finds himself suddenly awake, half-hard, listening intently, watching the darkness with dark-ready eyes.

His body knows something. It’s been watching closely.

Tonight, then. He swallows against a dry mouth, already excited.

He heard, one time, when they had no choice but to stay in a ragged motel with paper-thin walls. Stone stayed wired for the next full week. Since then, he’s seen it twice more, each time nearly shattering him.

Usually, there’s nothing he dares to do about it.

But in Dubrovnik, in this fancy hotel, they have a shared terrace. He left his door open to enjoy the air.

Did the doctor?

He finds himself creeping low out of his room, as attuned to his doctor’s pulse as any of his beautiful machines. He saved the doctor’s life today. He killed for the doctor today. It seems that today is going to be perfect, right down to the last seconds on the clock.

He stays low, creeping over the terrace like a lizard. He can’t get too close or make a single noise; not for nothing is that training from the Shadow Wolves better than anything Stone’s ever studied. The doctor is a deeply private man, for all his displays of aggression and theatricality. Stone’s certain he doesn't do this unless he’s sure he’s alone. If he even suspects…

But it seems he doesn’t. Stone pulls up a spot along the wall, tucked so he can see through the closed side of the French doors. It’s as clear a view as he dares. Already his heart is hammering, mouth tight with excitement and fear. He’s always been an adrenaline junkie, but this is so far beyond any rational risk. He’s an idiot. If he gets caught, it’s suicide by kink.

Stone reaches into the pocket of his pajama pants and curls his fingers around the hot curve of his cock. It's _good._

C'mon, now… think like an agent. Confidence is key. He won’t get caught. He’s out for a smoke. Innocently out for a smoke on a beautiful night in an empty hotel.

Not listening to the hitched breathing in the doctor’s room. Not pressing flat to the wall and peering through the teasing gaps in the gauze drapes over the glass door.

Not stroking his dick as he catches those clever hands moving in the dim bedroom, petting and playing down those firm ribs and between those long legs.

Moonlight spills over the supple curve of the doctor’s calf, planted perpendicular to the bed. In the shadows Stone can’t see much, but the outlines of the gestures are distinctive, rhythmic, so prettily animal that it’s hard not to know. The same light that gleams on the doctor’s leg catches a forearm, moving just a beat above slow, all lithe wires of muscle under dark-haired skin.

The mix of shadow and light gives Stone barely enough to see by. He can fill in the rest from scraps of memory and moonlight, starting with those eyes, more alive than any Stone’s ever known, so fierce and keen above his elegant nose and that offensively sexy moustache. He can recall perfectly the jut of his cheekbones and the feral flash of his teeth, and all the places where he’s unexpectedly graceful. From a thousand secret glances at Robotnik while he sips his coffee, Stone knows the doctor is more eyelash than man. Stone knows to the smallest degree the soft shapes of his deep laugh-lines, his long neck, the shadows of blue veins beneath his tight fade.

And he has seen more, even—they’ve seen each other naked, out in the field or splashed with corrosives or fresh from the decontamination shower. He’s hoarded every glance he’s gotten to take at his doctor’s body, the hair on his chest, the swell of his deltoids, his small, gorgeous cock now surely blushing the same hard red as his cheeks when he’s in the middle of a rage. Stone knows what's just a few feet away, almost close enough to touch: a big, sexy panther of a man, stretched out on his bed with that perfect mouth and that perfect mouthful.

Stone’s heart slams against his ribs as the doctor plays with himself. In the dark something must feel good—a shuddery sigh comes with a tensing of the thigh and a little upward arch of the stomach, driving hips down onto the mattress. His body both offering and evading what's being done to him. That steady stroking doesn’t let up.

Stone matches his rhythm. He wonders what the doctor must think about in times like this. Doubtlessly he considers it routine maintenance, as exotic as brushing his teeth or loosening a bolt. But what is it that can arouse such a man in the first place? Surely not other people. Machines, perhaps, or equations. Some abstract contemplation of physics or natural phenomena, something that he, fire-hearted miracle that he is, has more in common with than humans.

But the tremor down his doctor's leg says there’s pleasure in this, along with the lure of simple efficiency. _It feels good,_ says the silvery dive of that second hand, slipping down to help, and the quiet growl that accompanies the arch of narrow hips. _Finally someone knows what to do with me_ , in the husky chuff of breath and the luxurious stretch of his leg against the mattress.

Stone squeezes himself through the fabric of his pajamas, both hands now. He’s not imagining gloved hands on his dick, nor skin, nor anything but his own touch during this perfect secret glimpse. It’s hot enough just to get to see, to do something this base to someone this perfect. Like perving on the Great Comet of 1811.

He’s almost glad he can’t see his doctor’s face; he’s imagined it a thousand times, but having him wrecked and flushed and mortal would be so strange and breaking to see. It would be too far, too much. He’s already ruining Robotnik's hard-won privacy. He’s violating his doctor.

The thought is so shamefully arousing that his face burns with sticky-sweet guilt. Over the soft breaths and stifled noises in the bedroom he tries to rebuke himself for the wild, secret joy singing in his veins. It’s so much easier to worship when it’s a matter of coffee hours and rote responses. The aching of his flesh and his reverent mouth are much more humiliating, much more savage and inappropriate. He wants to tear his doctor into bites and drink his blood. He isn’t worthy of it.

The doctor isn’t loud here. As when there’s gunfire, all the theatrically bleeds away and leaves only that terrific focus behind. He’s a masterwork of tiny, precious things: a squirm, a little whimper, the ever-so-soft lapping noises of wet-on-wet skin. He does it like it’s got to be a secret, something sad, something filthy. An irresistibly romantic knot grows in Stone’s throat, drawn like a bruise by the thought of the pleasure and peace he’d give if he could.

The way the doctor does it must be mere habit, the tragic echo of a tragic time. He's so far beyond any need of shame, now.

Hips yearning up into his hands now, two at a time, hinting how much he craves stimulation. With a thrill he realizes that the doctor's getting close. Stone swallows hard, mouth watering at the half-sight of him. This will be the fourth time, and only the first where Stone's nerve has held to the end. This time, when he sneaks away like the prying deviant he is, he’ll go with the sight of his doctor’s pleasure burning in his brain.

The needy panting turns almost to hiccups, hands speeding up. Stone nearly loses control at the sound of a moan, unmistakably stifled by teeth dug deep into a pillow. He has to grip his dick hard, trying not to get distracted. He doesn’t want to miss a second.

The doctor trembles hard and snaps tense, one sharp twitch all along the wiry lines of his body. More noise filters into the pillow, nearly inaudible, a long series of whimpers punched out with every shivery rut against his hands.

Stone can see a trickle of wet sliding down the back of one of the doctor’s hands, caught gleaming in the moonlight. A prize for the witness. Stone shuts his eyes once, trying to breathe through the lust and the tenderness that tears his guts.

In the dark, the doctor shivers and pants through his nose. There’s one deep inhale that marks the end and Stone watches his body go slack. As the doctor reaches for the bedside table, Stone gets a view of the doctor’s cock: small and sticky and wet with his own cum as it starts to wilt. His mouth waters again and he comes the closest he has all night to groaning aloud his complaint at not being allowed to lick his doctor clean. But the doctor is fastidious, and a few passes of a damp cloth—always prepared—take that job for him. And there’s a little reward left for Stone after all: he recognizes the overstimulated little cringe from former lovers.

Robotnik's lovely, much-maligned body is _sensitive_. It's the thief's treat. A wicked intimacy stolen from the doctor, now all Stone’s.

He's still hard and hot in his pants. He counts back from 30, ignoring himself, so he can watch the doctor sigh from his depths and drag the crisp sheet over his hips. His lean arms fold, one over his belly, the other up under his pillow.

He waits ten minutes to be certain the doctor is asleep. Stone's still horny, but limp, and he can stay silent as he forces himself to crawl back across the terrace with his heart in his mouth.

Once inside, he hurries to the bathroom. Spit for lube—inelegant, but he doesn’t need much—pants rucked to his knees. It takes him a few seconds to get hard again, thinking of his shame and what he’s done to his doctor tonight. A minute later, he’s cumming straddling the toilet, braced with one hand against the wall, teeth dug into his arm as he moans it out. His legs shake as he does it, too fast and too hard for his system.

If anything, he’s only more turned on as he washes his hands. He’s spent but there will be no peace. He might as well wait for morning.

It’s a serious breach of good security to have the terrace doors propped open at night, where theoretically anyone could rappel up and slip into their bedrooms. Especially after they’ve killed seven people. But it’s such a beautiful night—very possibly one worth dying for.

Stone goes back out onto the terrace to actually have that cigarette. He silently pulls the doctor’s door to, so the smoke won’t bother him, and finds himself pleased and ferociously protective when the doctor doesn’t even stir. It was that good for him? A smutty unresolved heat curls up like a cat in Stone’s lower belly and gives his innards the faintest press of its claws.

He must’ve needed it _so_ badly.

Forearms on the balustrade, Stone smokes and watches the ash filter to the courtyard beneath him. It feels like tomorrow will be an iced espresso day. There’s cold brew in the mini fridge. Strawberry roses on homemade yogurt from the hotel kitchen. He’ll check for poison first, naturally. He always does.

For the next three hours he has nothing to do. He could sleep, or he could stand on their terrace, guarding their doors and letting the stars turn above him.

Without a backwards glance at the sleeping man he’s so happily martyred to, Stone keeps watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> martyr
> 
> noun  
> From the Greek μαρτυρ-, μάρτυς "marturos"
> 
> witness


	2. Chapter 2

The jasmine has bloomed in the night air. The fragrance only serves to remind him that when he smells it, the air must pass over microscopic droplets of blood he breathed in this afternoon.

Perhaps that’s what wakes him up.

He drags a hand down his face and squints up at the blurry edges of the ceiling. Internal reports indicate that it’s nearly midnight. He’s managed three hours offline. Time to get up, take his recreation. He could return to his comparison of Gogol and Basho. Confirm that the girls were plugged in and quietly charging for tomorrow. Maybe consume a glass of wine on the useless terrace off his bedroom. Keep his heart rate as low as it ever got.

It was a long day. A long, bloody day.

His lower abdomen tenses. He glares down at it and the half-hard bulge of his penis in his underwear.

He growls softly at it. “I’m gonna fire him.”

The threat does not seem to cow his inconvenience very much at all. But it’s attached to him. It must know what he knows, approximately.

He drops his head back against the pillow and breathes out hard. He’s long overdue for a patch of some kind—it's not sustainable to keep throwing this kind of pathetic error. Ever since the degradation of puberty he knew there was always an outside chance that, for all his cultivated frictionless drive, the right set of biceps or glimpse of chest hair could jam the circuits of his organic machinery. He’s mitigated the risk all his life.

Only to fall ass-backwards into hell. He should've been safe in idle contemplations of efficiency, but instead he'd fed bad data into his algorithm, reinforced a bad habit with physical pleasure stronger than any rivet. He’s gone and associated orgasm with fantasy, so his ever-active OS had freed his hardware to make demands contraindicated by his software.

In the vernacular: He’d played with himself, and played himself. Once was happenstance, twice was coincidence, three times was enemy action. After all, he’s always been his own worst enemy. Or at least the only one he respects. (Present circumstances excluded.)

He tries to get comfortable on his back. The posture is too exposed by far, but it's easier to be exposed than curled into a cringe. He closes his eyes, unhelpful anyway, and tries to find some kind of rhythm in his breathing.

He would prefer to have music. But Agent Stone’s only a wall away. When all he wants to listen to is George Michael, it’d be more discreet to put a red light up on the balcony.

And Stone doesn’t need him offering yet another bloodstained handprint of a clue, anyway. It’s disgusting, what that pathetic little sack of meat does to him. Robotnik is so above it all, so impossibly superior to this frisson of hot electricity and the humiliation of those big eyes in that handsome young face, but…

But shit, his agent’s _good_.

His breath rushes out of his billows and he lays a hand on his sternum. That’s a sensation as strange and potent to him as pleasure itself: admiration. No one impresses him. No one does anything that catches his attention and holds it. Sure, even negative fascination is better than boredom, but to find himself surprised and veritably delighted? He can’t remember the last time it happened. Probably his own genius.

But today, with Agent Stone... Those soft dark eyes turned sharkwise, the predatory lines beneath his suit, the lean and hungry cast of his features as he listened and tensed for the fight. The casual way he splattered the wall and his weapon and his hand, up to the wrist, in a man’s blood and brains.

Robotnik's salivary glands kick pathetically. His next breath rattles through him and he presses against his chest.

He shouldn't have enjoyed any of it. Anyone who'd come so close to a tie with his babies was paying him a greivous insult. If he were in his right mind, all that would’ve been left of that kind of upstart would be a stain on the pavement.

Instead. Oh, instead.

He strokes a hand down his stomach, cool skin unpleasantly soft and furred under his fingers. But his skin wakes and the grasping ends of his nerves tingle for even that little bit of stimulus, so he does it again, not quite ready to face his own erection.

Instead, he hadn’t wanted to hurt Agent Stone in the slightest. In fact, he’d played with, and found he liked playing with, the idea that he couldn’t hurt Stone. Not with the drones so far away and Stone’s gun drawn. Not with Stone’s eyes watching every instant, unfiltered and reactionary as the most refined systems aim to be.

Not, particularly, with Agent Stone’s hand holding him against the wall. Robotnik couldn’t have hurt him.

It was a waking nightmare of a feeling, familiar and sickly distorted into something unknown and intoxicating. Helplessness. Finding himself at Stone’s mercy.

His cock throbs. He presses his teeth into his lip.

It’s still Agent Stone, of course. His impossibly sunny, sweet-tempered, aggravatingly encouraging agent. Robotnik knew he had nothing to fear from that avenue. Stone might have the brass neck to pop the occasional lowlife or back-sass a diplomat, but the awe he had for Robotnik could be seen from space. Fear and reverence both. Just because Robotnik knew his limits didn’t mean Stone had a clue that he has Ivo in the palm of his hand, at his disposal for protection or for pain.

Agent Stone wouldn’t. Ever. But he could.

Easily.

The proof was written in the soft ache of his shoulder blades, where he’d been slammed—manhandled—against a wall not 12 hours ago. It was one thing to have a theoretical awareness of how much direct physical strength was under those sleek black suits. But his agent was prim as the Quaker Oats mascot. No one anticipates brute power from that pretty face.

Robotnik slides his hand down his belly and sighs as his fingertips skate the hot, tight skin of his penis. He spreads his legs, bracing one on the mattress. The barely-there touch slackens the tight belts of his tendons, tension beginning to ease into unfamiliar languor. The gentleness of his own hands makes a striking counterpoint, when his thoughts are all rough and shattering things.

Stone could’ve done anything he liked today. Pointed his gun and shot out one of Robotnik’s knees. Scattered his miraculous brains across the same wall to which he’d slammed his body. What were trembling electricity and sparking neurons against the tearing power of a single well-placed 9mm?

He still could. The badniks were in sleep mode. The door to the balcony was open, and his bedroom only had the one lock. He was naked. If someone managed to make it through the guards, through the bolts, the alarms and traps and locks, then Stone was his sole line of protection from the outside. At night, with his weapons resting and his sidearm so very far away, he’d done nothing short of lock himself into a fortress, with no protection from Stone himself.

The notion tickles and shivers down his spine. Nothing he could do, if his agent wanted something other than violence—

(Agent Stone wouldn’t. Human beings had never wanted that with him. There was no reason to expect that to change now, when he was firmly aged out of the window for conventional sex appeal.)

If Stone wanted, there would be nothing Robotnik could do to stop him. He doesn’t kid himself about a physical fight. Due caution and the knowledge that Robotnik’s a biter won’t do much to stop someone hell-bent on having their way. Stone keeps up his krav maga. All that street fighting against fascists makes for damn good grappling.

His hips squirm away from his own hand, wriggling in the knowledge that Stone could have anything he wanted of him. And it’d be easy.

There’d be no point in struggling against that kind of raw competence. He knows lethal skill when he sees it. He’d have to surrender, unconditionally. He’d have to let Stone have his way.

His dick drools at the thought of it. The touch of his other hand drags a growl out of him, half-heartedly stifled even as the shame makes his stomach turn. The balcony door is open. All Stone would have to do is turn a knob and take a step.

Ruthless, handsome Agent Stone killing people for him in broad daylight. Red blood and salt-sea air and an empty martini glass left on the counter in the early morning. Smiling at him with his hand on his chest, fingers splayed wide, as if he could feel Robotnik’s heartbeat through his clothes. Smiling at him over lunch, with blood still wet on the cuffs of his shirt.

Stone’s good at what he does. He’d be good at this, too, and leave no quarter. When there’s no room for argument, there can be no hope of saving face. No need to try. If Stone wanted to use him, and used him, who would stop to wonder how much Robotnik himself might want to be used?

Robotnik turns his head and holds the pillow in his teeth, hands still so gentle, so careful with his sensitive cock.

Who would ever know how much he’d like to be his pawn’s plaything?

He whimpers, sliding effortlessly into the fantasy of it. Agent Stone being rough with him. Wrecking him. Undoing all his minute calibrations and ravishing him like a jackhammer cleaning a camera lens. One strong hand pinning him against the bed so Stone can rob him of a kiss, spread his legs, fill him up. Fuck him full, make him stretch for it and whine and take it all. Whisper in his ear that he could cling and claw and get as loud as he liked, because it wouldn’t be over until Stone was done with him. Until Stone had taken absolute advantage of his position at Robotnik’s side, seized the opportunity to finally have him when the girls were asleep, and the doors were open, and his body was naked—

Achey, empty, hot and strange; he hates this feeling, hates and leans close to it, holding the tip of his tongue to the battery of lust as long as he can stand. Every touch gentle, gentle, gentle. Only good touches. No pain at all. No teeth to give him something to fight.

Stone would never. It's not what he's primed to do, anyway. Stone’s hands are precise, perfect. Almost as fine a pair of killing machines as Robotnik himself can make. And Stone uses them to kill and carry for Robotnik. 

To kill and carry and stay ready, at his whim, himself the single focus of Stone's daily drudgery and defensive bloodbaths. A most verastile machine, a living weapon all Robotnik's own. And Robotnik can't fire him. 

It makes every inch of his skin feel like ionized neon, bristling for the charge.

If Stone ever wanted (he’d never want)— if he ever even thought (he wouldn’t dream)— if— then he could have it at a word, at a smile, and—

And Stone would be so gentle, so good.

He’d leave Ivo in ruins.

He moans it out, voice buried in his pillow. His hips hitch hard into his hands, hands slick with wet need from the darkest penetralia of his heart. Ever light-years ahead, his mind finishes the fantasy, imagining himself cumming helpless and hard on Stone’s cock, staring into his eyes. Enduring that sweet smile and the warm hand resting on his heart, feeling the life Stone protected thrumming just for him.

He shakes through it, whimpering as his muscles move without his permission. He can’t control it even though he wants to. This isn’t his choice—he wouldn’t subject himself to this terrible high and dismal low. The pleasure is so strong he can feel it unraveling the fibers of his legs, but there’s no _relief_.

At last, he finds the shallowest point of the ebb. Despite the spasms, the dump of neurochemicals and physical exhaustion have him hurtling towards sleep. He cleans himself perfunctorily, not wanting to face a mess in the morning—he’d had a feeling this would happen tonight, while the memory of the incident was still so immediate. Even that little touch feels like pressing on a bruise. Overstimulation? Or his sentimental hardware wanting to be soothed?

Overstimulation, he decides. Nothing sleep won’t fix. His breathing has evened out again, and he can’t think of anything but the crispness of his sheets and the occasional filthy clench of his gyring muscles. And Agent Stone. Capable, competent, effective Stone.

Prim and proper and perfectly professional Agent Stone, with his cautious eyes and hands always in view.

Robotnik takes a deep breath to push it away, curling an arm under his head and another over his belly. It all amounts to nothing, anyway. Stone would never. End of story.

He’ll start work on the patch tomorrow.


End file.
